by Samar Zuberi
Samar Zuberi is a Research Associate at the Collective for Social Science Research and Research Uptake Officer Pakistan for LANSA
How can agriculture and food-related
policies and interventions be better designed to improve nutrition outcomes,
particularly for young women and girls? Dialogue around this question was
started at a workshop hosted by the Collective for Social Science Research /
Leveraging Agriculture for Nutrition in South Asia (LANSA) on 15 April in
Karachi. The workshop brought together diverse stakeholders in agriculture and
nutrition including senior officials from provincial governments, academic
researchers, representatives of international development partners, and civil
society organizations and activists.
The day was structured around knowledge
sharing and engaging participants in the agriculture-nutrition debate. LANSA
researchers outlined their research plans with the explicit goal of getting
feedback and ensuring our research is responsive to the priorities of
stakeholders.
Haris Gazdar, LANSA’s lead researcher in
Pakistan and Director of the Collective for Social Science Research, set out
the aims of the workshop. He noted the provincial level of government had
emerged as a key node for nutrition policy - hence the focus of the workshop on
provincial stakeholders. Another event
is planned to focus on federal government stakeholders and representatives of
international organisations based in the capital Islamabad.
Julia Powell from the Institute of
Development Studies, UK introduced LANSA to the audience after which two
Pakistan-LANSA research studies were presented by Mysbah Balagamwala and Rashid
Mehmood. The first highlighted women’s work in agriculture and the potential
impact this could have on nutrition outcomes. The second examined food-based
approaches to addressing undernutrition through studying agri-food value chains.
I presented Initial findings of interviews with agriculture and nutrition
influencers and decision makers. The findings summarized perceptions of the
political context, knowledge and evidence, and capacity issues related to the
development of nutrition-sensitive agriculture in Pakistan. These findings
highlighted that the policy landscape with respect to nutrition was beginning to
advance, while agriculture’s role in improving nutrition outcomes still needed
to be cemented.
Government officials from four of the
provinces presented on their agricultural programmes and discussed with
participants the potential of these programmes to incorporate specific
nutrition objectives, exploring how evidence translates into action. Dr.
Nihaluddin Marri, Deputy Director Agricultural Research Institute Tando Jam,
spoke about Agriculture Research in Sindh and said its main objective was to
increase farm incomes to improve people’s quality of life, which included their
consumption of nutritious food. Two Additional Secretaries from the Agriculture
Department in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan, Humayun Khan and Imran Khan,
respectively, spoke about relevant agriculture programmes in their provinces.
Ms. Durre Seemi, Deputy Director Women’s Wing Agriculture Extension,
Balochistan provided an overview of the work the Women’s Wing did and how their
focus on food preparation, and preservation affected food security and
nutrition within households.
The workshop finished on a lively note,
with participants generating research priorities through spirited discussion.
The numerous points raised by participants are reflected in the themes for the
call for proposals that LANSA is funding. LANSA’s aim for the Call
is to support research outside the consortium from partners with similar
objectives. Some of these priorities such as the mapping of power in the
agriculture and nutrition landscape and considering the role of climate change
and its effect on the nutrition-agriculture link have been incorporated into
the proposed themes for the LANSA responsive window. The LANSA team in Pakistan sees the workshop
as a step towards fostering enduring conversations among and between
researchers and practitioners working on the linkages between agriculture and nutrition.
This blog originally appeared on LANSA's blog in May 2014.
This blog originally appeared on LANSA's blog in May 2014.
Samar Zuberi is a Research Associate at the Collective for Social Science Research and Research Uptake Officer Pakistan for LANSA
